Long after the close of World War II, the Western Europeans have recovered economically, overturned alien communist regimes, and absorbed Central and Eastern European states into the European project. Collectively they vastly outstrip the remains of the Soviet Union, so why won't they defend themselves?

Taking NATO membership off the table would remove Moscow’s incentive to keep the Ukrainian conflict alive. Ukraine could develop economically and politically as it wished. Sanctions could end, encouraging economic integration from Europe through Ukraine onto Russia.

It's to the credit of Donald Trump that, though assaulted for non-existent Russian ties from the beginning of his presidency and even before (as is now emerging from the despicable tale of the Fusion GPS dossier), he has continued to examine possible areas of agreement with Russia for the good of our country and everyone else as well. As the man said -- "Trust but verify!"

Turkey's Islamist President and wannabe Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan has destroyed the pretense that Turkey and America are allies. The Trump administration now must defend America’s interests and values from Turkey.

Donald Trump’s criticisms of Europe and NATO are well-founded. Washington should stop providing the international equivalent of welfare for nations, such as Angela Merkel's Germany, that can and should defend themselves.

The administration’s best shot would be to mix diplomacy and sanctions in an initiative backed by the Chinese. But winning that assistance requires persuasion rather than compulsion. The administration must convince Beijing that pressing the North further is in China’s interest as well as America’s interest.

With help from President Reagan’s former Attorney General Ed Meese and from Jon Utley’s Freda Utley Foundation, which provided funding, a statue of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev was recently unveiled in Moscow.

NATO should add nations only if they increase the security of the whole. Since U.S. would do most of the heavy lifting in any conflict with nuclear-armed Russia, the critical question for Washington is whether adding a new member would increase Americans’ security.

What foreign government could possibly entangle in truth, lies, half-truths, rumors, and scandals the Trump family, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey, John McCain, John Podesta, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and a host of other Beltway grandees? Putin is now America’s puppet master — and we are his empty-headed playthings dangling from his Kremlin strings.

Putin is not Pope Francis. But he is not Stalin; he is not Hitler; he is not Mao; and Russia today is not the USSR. Putin is an autocrat cut from the same bolt of cloth as the Romanov czars. If America stumbles into a war with Russia that all our Cold War presidents avoided, the Russia baiters and Putin haters will be put in same circle of hell by history as the idiot war hawks of 1914 and the three blind men of Versailles in 1919.

Connect the dots and it looks like the same group of dictator-friendly Democrats who got the the spurious dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump into the news have chosen this moment to leak information on Donald Jr. to keep the phony Russian collusion story alive.

Washington needs to restore a working relationship with Moscow on multiple issues. That doesn’t mean trusting Vladimir Putin. It does mean making policy in accord with the way the world is, not the way we wish it was.

Accommodating the illicit nuclear ambitions of a Russian ally? Welcoming a Russian foothold in the Middle East? Refusing to provide arms to a sovereign country invaded by Russia? Diminishing our defenses and pursuing a Moscow-friendly policy of hostility to fossil fuels? All of these items, of course, refer to things said or done by President Barack Obama.

Taking out Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad would mean we are now aligned with “partners” who include assorted Sunni Sharia-supremacists – including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood – whose agenda is no less murderous and menacing than Assad’s.

If President Trump truly will not tolerate the Assad government using chemical weapons then he should take out the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center where they are made and managed, anything short of that is merely continuing the fantasies of John McCain and the halfhearted measures and follies of Barack Obama.

The Russian Revolution was one of the most remarkable and decisive events in history. A century has passed since revolution came to Russia. But the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917 passed without any remembrance in St. Petersburg, where a new Russia was birthed.

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West, when standing up for Russia’s interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant. He not only remains popular in his own country, but has admirers in nations whose political establishments are implacably hostile to him.

As we beat our chests in celebration of our own moral superiority over other nations and peoples, consider what Trump is trying to do here, and who is really behaving as a statesmen, and who is acting like an infantile and self-righteous prig. If Trump’s talking to Putin can help end the bloodshed in Ukraine or Syria, it would appear to be at least as ethical an act as pulpiteering about our moral superiority on the Sunday talk shows.